


weather this storm without me

by sinkingsidewalks



Series: i want to be able to love you (without it hurting this much) [6]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: Vera turns three and Tessa decides to end her marriage the next day when Marcus wasn't at the party.





	weather this storm without me

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, more angst, but it's also kinda hopeful? I don't know. You judge this, on the scale of 1 to emotionally compromising.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

Vera turns three and Tessa decides to end her marriage the next day when Marcus wasn’t at the party. 

Scott was though, with the twins and a small gaggle of Moir children, along with her brother’s kids and both of their moms. It had felt right. To see Alma right next to Kate, both leaning in with cameras in hand as Vera stretched away from her to blow out candles. To have her riding around the back yard on Scott’s shoulders, shrieking gleefully.

More right than the uncomfortable silences of dinners with her in-laws where Marcus tried not to fight with his dad and she’d failed valiantly at containing their over-the-top toddler in a semi-formal restaurant. 

She’s not surprised, nor is she emotional about the decision, it just is. She prints out the paperwork, sends an email to her lawyer, and signs her daughter up for baby ballet, thinking nothing of it.

Scott doesn’t agree. 

“Tess.” He says that week on their usual Sunday call, something heavier than exasperation in his tone. “This is huge.”

She shrugs and continues wiping down countertops. She’s basically been a single parent for the last eleven months. “I don’t think so.” 

He sighs, and she can tell he’s a little annoyed with her, but he lets it go for now.

 

Tessa’s first night back in London, she cries herself to sleep in a house that reminds her too much of being twenty-four.

Her bed is cold without Scott there.

Her hand feels heavy under the absence of an engagement ring.

Her tears drip down her face and into her hair and she doesn’t even try to push them away.

Tomorrow, she’ll get up make coffee and dust off her bare bookshelves. She’ll text Jordan and make a plan to spend a weekend in Toronto picking out new home décor. Tomorrow she will open up her planner and go to a Pilates class and sort out her life again.

Tonight, Tessa hugs a too soft pillow to her chest and cries herself to sleep.

 

When Marcus gets home from Beijing the next week, Vera hardly even blinks at his sudden arrival (just like she never cries over his disappearances) and Tessa knows she’s made the right decision. 

When Vera goes down for her afternoon nap, Tessa sits down across from him on their living room couch and settles the pile of paperwork on the coffee table. 

“I think we should get a divorce.”

Marcus’ gaze snaps up from his email, his eyebrows in his hairline, and he stares at her like she just sprouted a third eye. 

“What?”

She repeats herself and reels because this is _not_ how she expected this conversation to go. She expected him to be resigned, disappointed, but not surprised. She expected him to be understanding, and in agreement that their marriage had been over for a while already. 

She was wrong.

He blinks at her and she watches the emotions shuffle through his features. Shock. Anger. Upset. He settles back on anger. 

“Just like that?”

“Marcus.” She’s _tired._

He frowns, his brow furrowing. He wants to try, he says, to get them back on track. 

She agrees to counselling and to rehash the conversation in a month. She puts the paperwork away, but doesn’t consider getting rid of it.

 

Montreal became home to her the first day they spent working with Marie and Patch but now it feels like she’s drowning in it. There’s a memory around every corner, a favourite coffee shop or a café where she had lunch with Marie and Billie-Rose. Each one haunts her with its foreign familiarity. They whisper about a time she can never return to but can hardly remember.

Scott doesn’t notice. He notices lots of other things, like how many mornings a week she goes for a run and how often she eats the pastry he leaves waiting for her return. He notices how she can hardly glance at her reflection and when she does how it turns into a bitter stare. He’s Scott. He always sees through her. 

They don’t talk about it though. They don’t talk about so much, yet every conversation, every look, is so heavy it drags her deeper; down the Saint Lawrence and out to sea. 

She can’t breathe. She wants to yell at him. Her lungs are still made of tissue. They can only pull oxygen from air. 

She can’t pull him up when all she’s doing is sinking.

Once upon a time, he would’ve pushed her away in his pain. She might have preferred that. At least then she wouldn’t have added failing him to her own guilt.

 

She texts Scott asking if he can take Vera to her skating lessons because the only time the counsellor Marcus found can fit them in is Thursday evening and she knows that the twins have hockey that day and none of them will mind being at the rink an extra hour. Then she tries not to start out the sessions bitter because she’s missing her daughter learning how to move on the ice. 

Doctor Martin is a genuine, certified marriage counsellor who does nothing but counsel couples on their marriages and it’s weird. Tessa’s spent a lot of time in therapy in her life but it’s never actually been _just_ therapy. It feels like something’s been misplaced when she sits on a grey couch beside Marcus, and she doesn’t linger too long on the thought that it’s weird because it’s not Scott there with her.

By the second session they’re just arguing. They’re going in circles about time and travel and Vera and saying nothing in particular when she finally just cuts the bullshit.

“Do you actually want to stay married or do you just not want a divorce?” She demands. 

He stammers out an answer that she knows isn’t the truth and the therapist tries to get them back on track. 

She still has no idea how he feels about her.

After the session, they drive in silence, the little rain coming down feeling like it’s smashing the car to pieces. Tessa runs up to Scott’s apartment alone to grab their daughter and buckles Vera into her car seat. 

The little girl doesn’t notice the tension in the car as they drive home. She’s chattering away about skating, and Etta and Amelia, excited and over-tired. Tessa can barely listen to her she wants out so badly, she only tunes in when Vera says:

“And Daddy said-“

“Uncle Scott.” Tessa corrects, eyes boring a hole straight through the windshield. 

Vera keeps chattering.

They pull up to a red light. She can feel Marcus stare at her.

 

Scott comes home drunk. 

She’s sitting on the couch, HGTV playing quietly, with her laptop in front of her as she picks through emails. He collapses onto her legs. She stiffens. 

She catches a glimpse of his eyes before his face drops. They’re full of pain, pain she specifically put there. It’s agonizing to see him like this. 

“Tess.” He whines, rubbing his face into one of her pajama clad thighs. His hand runs up her other leg and squeezes her hip. She can smell the liquor rolling off him. 

She weaves her fingers through his hair gently, scratching along his scalp and he hums, almost purring like a cat. He garbles something unintelligible. 

“What?” she laughs softly. 

He props his chin on her leg to look up at her, his eyes glassy and warm, too full of emotion. “I love you so much, Tess.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “I love you too, Scott.”

“No, like, _so much_ Tess.” He squeezes her hip again, eyes holding onto hers like an anchor but she wouldn’t pull away even if she could. “Like, I wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t love you, there wouldn’t be enough of me left to make a person.”

“And our _baby_.” He sighs, dropping his cheek back down to her leg. Tessa cracks, tears slipping down her face. 

“I love, loved, him _so much_.” He rolls onto his back, eyes staring empty up to the ceiling. They’re filled with tears too but his don’t fall. “So much of me is missing.”

“I know, Scott.” Her breath grates against her throat, catching and cracking her voice. She feels the same way, like there are holes in her very being. She cups his jaw with her palms, he turns his face to kiss one. “I know.”

 

Tessa puts Vera to bed, she helps her into pajamas with dinosaurs on them, brushes her little teeth, and reads her _The Paper Bag Princess_ while Marcus watches from the hallway. As soon as the light is off (and the nightlight’s on) Tessa finds herself in the living room, right back in the middle of an argument.

“She’s calling Scott ‘Daddy’ because he’s _around,_ Marcus. He’s around and she hears his twins say it so of _course_ she’s picked up on it.”

Marcus shakes his head. “Are you fucking him again?”

Tessa’s blood boils. “What. The. Fuck.”

“I asked if you were sleeping with him again, Tessa.” He sounds resigned, like he’s put out that he had to ask the question once, never mind twice.

“Why would you ask me that.” She crosses her arms over her chest and glares. 

“Jesus Christ, but I’m not _blind_. I can see the way he looks at you, everyone can, and I know that you broke up and I know that you said you _can’t be that way anymore_. He throws her words from almost a decade ago back at her. “But Tessa he-“

Vera cries in the other room. Tessa takes a step back. 

“No Marcus,” she says cold. “I’m not _fucking_ Scott.”

But as she goes into her daughter’s darkened bedroom and rubs her back until she falls asleep, Tessa thinks maybe he’s not so wrong. Sure, she and Scott haven’t done anything, (which is the same thought process she used during Carmen when they were all-but-fucking and he had a girlfriend, but she shoves that aside) but hasn’t there been a shift in how she’s approaching their relationship? What’s the phrase? An emotional affair?

It feels like someone’s doused her with a bucket of cold water, like being pushed into the lake on Victoria Day, too early in May for the water to have warmed yet. It snatches her breath out of her lungs.

She doesn’t know what she wants. Or maybe she does, and that’s even scarier. 

 

Scott forgets his phone at home one morning and Tessa slips into Gadbois between meetings to bring it to him. She almost gets in and out without seeing anyone, she can’t stand the looks of pity, but Marie catches her on her way out and Tessa can’t say no to her.  
Marie wraps her into a long hug and doesn’t give the chance to bow out before pulling her into the office for a chat.

There’s a picture in here of them from the beginning of the comeback, standing on the ice, wrapped up in each other’s arms with huge grins. She hardly recognizes herself. 

“How are you doing?” She doesn’t let go of Tessa’s hands. 

Tessa bites her lip. “Okay, I think.”

There’s a long moment of silence, or as silent as the rink can ever be in the middle of the afternoon, where Marie holds onto both of Tessa’s hands with both of hers and looks at her former student. 

“Scott,” she says gently. “He is not doing much better.”

Tessa looks at her knees and swallows her tears. “I know.”

She does. She sees it every day when he comes home expecting the life they should have had, but don’t. He’s not getting any better, and she’s making it worse.

They’re both just going through the motions. Pretending that it’s getting easier, that they’re healing and feeling better. They’re pretending they’re going to make it through this. She can see every lie they carve out, to themselves, to their families, as clear as the untouched door to the nursery still set up in their home.

“Oh, ma cherie. It is not your fault.” Marie-France squeezes her fingers. “It is not anyone’s fault, it just is.”

It’s the same thing she said to them in the hospital, Tessa thinks. She takes a ragged breath. “I know.”

It doesn’t make her feel any less guilty though. Guilty for not being better, not being enough. Guilty for losing their baby. 

Marie gives her another hug. “Try not to blame yourself.”

“I know.” She repeats. The trouble is, the words don’t mean anything anymore, they’ve been said too many times. 

 

“Okay.” Marcus says when she goes back out into the living room. He’s sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. “I’ll sign the papers.”

She sits down next to him, her stomach still turning. “Thank you.”

He nods. 

They agree she’ll have Vera full time but when he’s in town he’ll see her every other weekend. She’ll keep her house, obviously, and he’ll start looking for a place to stay in the morning. 

She says she’ll have her lawyers put together all the specifics. 

There’s not much to divide.

 

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.” Scott’s banging around the kitchen talking to Alma on the phone and Tessa doesn’t mean to be listening. She’s sitting in the dining room, staring at her computer screen when she’s supposed to be working and it’s all too easy to tune into Scott’s side of the conversation. 

“Mhm.” Alma must be saying something; he makes another listening sound. 

“Yeah. Tess is fine too.”

She knows he doesn’t believe that. She sees him watching, always careful with his words, trying, but not pushing too hard, asking if she wants to go to the rink again, asking if she wants to go to brunch. She never does. 

“No, Mom.” He sounds so tired. She can tell he’s trying to sound sincere. “We’re doing good.”

Tessa knows they won’t survive this. 

 

“It’s nice.” Scott says one Sunday evening, after all their girls have been tucked into bed. He’s talking about the twins, relaying a cute story from the previous afternoon. “That they have each other. It reminds me of how I always had you.”

Dead air hangs on the line. Tessa thinks she should say something about how they’ve never actually been _like siblings_. But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a breath and says something she’ll maybe regret tomorrow.

“ _Have_ me, Scott.” She basically whispers. “You always have me.”

It’s his turn to pause and it goes on long enough she wonders if the line dropped. Just as she’s about to pull her phone away from her ear to check his voice crackles through the speaker. 

“Me too, Tess.”

They sit in silence, listening to each other breathe for god knows how long until she hears a shuffle on his end and a quiet uttering of _Daddy?_

He sighs. “Gotta go, Tess.”

“Goodnight, Scott.”

“Sweet dreams, kiddo.”

She wants to tell him she loves him, but she’s not totally sure what it would mean anymore.

The problem is that, over the course of so many years, she’s loved him in nearly every possible way. She’s loved him with the unabashed innocence of a seven-year-old, through schoolgirl crushes, and wild teenage hormones. She’s loved him as the father of her child, and her fiancé, and the Love of her Life. As the key to her successes and the partner in her failures. He’s the other half of her memories. He’s the only other person who has lived her life.

He’s her best friend, in a way that those words so poorly encapsulate. 

So now, after it all, she doesn’t know what’s left for him to be to her, except for everything. 

 

He tempts her onto the ice once. She does it because his goofy smile and _come on, Tess_ are doing a terrible job at clouding over the hurt in his eyes. So she gets up before the crack of dawn even though her bones feel so tired she thinks they’ve calcified, locked her joints shut (it isn’t the early hour, they always feel that way now) and goes with him to Gadbois an hour before his juniors have ice time. 

It’s so quiet. They sit side by side and lace up their skates and the only thing she can hear other than her own breathing is his. This was their favourite practice slot during the comeback because it always seemed like they were the only people alive. In the early hours of the day, locked away with only the ice out in front of them, it was like nothing else existed, just him to her and her to him. 

He stands on the ice and holds his hand out for her. She takes it and even before they’re moving she feels the lump form in her throat that she’s worked so hard at swallowing. Scott puts music on and they dance loosely, fumbling through the footwork of long forgotten step sequences. 

They skate and she feels herself shattering. 

She feels the ice melting beneath her skates. The weight of her blade pulling her down, sucking her into black water she can’t swim through. No matter how hard she kicks, her boots drown her. 

The music changes, soft notes of haunting strings filling the rink. She pulls her hands out of Scott’s before she even recognizes it. The Mahler. His phone must just be on shuffle.

The violins deepen. 

“I can’t.” She chokes. “I’m sorry.”

The music rises as she skates back to the boards, the soundtrack of her pain. 

“Tessa.” He calls after her. She’s wrenching her laces undone, surrounded by the music, by their youth, by the innocence they had when they skated this every day. 

It cuts mid-note to silence.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to really fight to get this one together so it might be the end of this series, at least for now. I know it's probably not the happy ending most of you want but I hope it's at least satisfying in some way.  
> But seriously, thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this. I really don't know where this series came from but I definitely wouldn't have gotten it this far without all of your lovely comments and support.  
> I'm on tumblr @sinkingsidewalks if you want to keep up with my other writing. Or if you have questions, I might have answers <3


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